


tricking ourselves nice

by MusicalChick13



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (aka Shireen who does not appear but is mentioned a lot), Acceptance, Character Study, Child Death, Denial of Feelings, Grief/Mourning, Lots of denial up in here folks, Self-Reflection, but it's not significant enough to put in the ship tag, jon/daenerys is briefly mentioned for anyone who Does Not Want to interact with that at all, the author's opinions on various situations and characters are not necessarily what Davos's are, wow I write a lot of grief/loss don't I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalChick13/pseuds/MusicalChick13
Summary: After all, isn’t that what he’d wanted? For as far back as he could remember, all he could think about was finding some way to get rid of the Red Woman. To curb her influence, keep her away from people he cared about. (Not that he had ever succeeded in that.) Shouldn’t he jump up and down in victory now that she was gone?And yet, he had demanded they open the gate.
Relationships: Melisandre of Asshai/Davos Seaworth
Kudos: 3





	tricking ourselves nice

When she had told him she’d be dead by morning, he had thought she was simply assuming the White Walkers would kill them all.

Which, really, was what they had _all_ assumed. Never in a thousand years, in _many_ thousands of years, would he have guessed she was planning to lay down and die even if she survived the battle.

She was, quite literally, a miraculous woman. Somehow, he had assumed that her faith, misguided as it may have been, was strong enough to defy everything, even death itself. In fact, he had seen her prove that very thing, when she brought Jon Snow back to life. He had made the mistake of assuming she was just too stubborn to die.

His wrong assumption should, by all accounts, be a relief. One more corrupted creature gone from the world. Some sins…well, no amount of piety or aid against the dead could wash out the senseless sacrifice of a _child_ , much less one as good and innocent as Shireen. 

But…

He doesn’t know what the other part of that sentence is. Shireen probably would have known; she was always better at words than he was.

Stannis probably would have known, too. For all the Red Woman had done to the king, he was the one who had spent the most time around her. He may not have ever seen exactly what she was, but he'd seen probably the most of her she had ever allowed anyone to.

He wonders if she had loved his friend. 

He wonders further if a response of “yes" would improve the situation or make it worse.

For Davos Seaworth has seen the things people will do in the name of love, and they are all equally terrifying. He himself has lay awake at night, imagining all of the horrible ways he could, should, and would have killed the fire priestess for hurting a child he loved. The things Stannis has done in the name of justice still haunt him. All of this, the war for the throne, the divided loyalties that became more fragile every day, the tyranny of House Lannister, started because two golden-haired siblings decided they would refuse to love in the way normal people do. The Rebellion before only happened because a Targaryen man wanted a woman he couldn’t have.

If the Red Woman had truly only cared about her own ends, perhaps that was a mercy.

* * *

It occurs to him that, without her, none of them would be alive. Without Jon’s resurrection, none of this would have happened. No one south of the wall would even know the White Walkers existed. And the remaining group at Winterfell certainly wouldn’t have survived without the extra time she’d bought them by igniting the trench.

Somehow, that made sense. Of course in this miserable world, the final death of the dead could only come about from the deeds of a dangerous, manipulative, child-killing fanatic. 

Peace at the cost of innocence. Safety at the cost of allowing a terrible woman to live. All victory comes with a price. 

Stannis had taught him that.

A small consolation is that she didn’t live long—even she seemed to realize that she didn’t deserve to.

But.

But she had left this world by virtue ( _ha, a poor word selection_ ) of her own choice, therefore preventing that chance for a just execution? But he was still grateful he was alive, regardless of her part in his being so? But the deaths of so many others prevented him from feeling any relief upon hers?

Because after all, isn’t that what he’d wanted? For as far back as he could remember, all he could think about was finding some way to get rid of the Red Woman. To curb her influence, keep her away from people he cared about. (Not that he had ever succeeded in that.) Shouldn’t he jump up and down in victory now that she was gone?

_And yet, he had demanded they open the gate_.

Perhaps it had been instinct. Perhaps it had been her so-called “god” working through him. Or perhaps he was actually mad. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing he had experienced during his many years in this world. What else could explain his decision to accept _her_ help, in a battle where trust was one of their most valuable weapons and in decreasingly short supply.

But.

If he was, indeed, mad, perhaps that meant he was no different from her. His goal had been to survive the hordes of the dead. To protect the kingdom, even at the expense of rightfully destroying a hateful woman who deserved to die.

If he had truly cared about justice for Shireen and not merely his own life, wouldn’t he have turned the woman away? Refused to have anything to do with her in order to hold onto what goodness and hope was still left in him?

Or. Perhaps. Perhaps it had been for the sake of the realm. A delay of punishment for the survival of the greater good. The very same thing she had been preaching for who knows how long.

The idea of them being alike, of his legacy being tied in any way to this woman, who had corrupted every last thing he held dear, gives him a brief glimpse of what he believes death must feel like.

Davos Seaworth has been through a lot. Lost a lot. His fingers, his son, his king, his reading teacher and companion, his chance at retribution, his belief in too many of the nice things he once believed existed when he was younger and brighter and more innocent.

Apparently, he must lose himself, too.

* * *

He had once said, to the very woman who still plagues his thoughts, even after her hasty demise, that there were different levels of “good.” That no one was truly all anything. By his own logic, that must include her.

Her, with her sense of unchangeable truths, her nonsense about rotting onions and how a man is either good or evil. All morality, not so much black and white as a wash of red, red, red. How could he include her in his own beliefs if she refused to include herself?

They could not be the same. Even if he had lost himself, had fallen off the path of whatever goodness was supposed to be now, there was no way he could become her.

But.

Such a small word, yet it prevented him from sleeping, from enjoying food or wine, from focusing on how to rebuild his life after Stannis and after Jon Snow and after the White Walkers. The word sticks to his mind like wax to paper, turning any reassurance he might have been able to offer himself into shit.

No, he was not the Red Woman. But a little piece of her lives in him. And Davos doesn’t know whether that’s his own fault or hers.

Maybe this post-death understanding comes from Davos’ inborn kindness. Maybe it comes from the slivers of evil that have always lurked inside him, inside every man who sets foot in this miserable country. Maybe it is Melisandre’s own understanding, passed onto him through death, or maybe he has been corrupted by her, too.

Maybe it’s everything at once. A combination of both their goods and evils, born of shared experience, not falling into one extreme of the other. A duality, like he had tried to explain to her, once, a lifetime ago.

And maybe it’s the smallest bit sad that he will never have the chance to ask her for an answer.

* * *

It takes far too long to realize that he never would have been able to kill her, anyway. Not after Renly’s death, Stannis’s war campaigns, everything that had happened up at the Wall. They had been through too much together, to the point where—in a truly sick way—he couldn’t imagine life without her.

How cruelly fitting, then, that he be the one to watch her die.

He is very tired of watching people die.

It takes a moment before the Onion Knight realizes he is crying. He has no idea why. 

* * *

Sometimes it feels like he has mourned enough for several generations. For all of his sons and their sons and so on and so on until his bloodline finally dies out. He supposes this strange almost-grief for Melisandre is just one more link in that chain.

In a world where friends are few, anyone who survives the same trials you have has to become the closest thing. Anyone who can make you believe in anything, least of all miracles themselves, is bound up with you, for ill or for good.

It is for this reason and this reason alone, he tells himself, that a feeling of sorrow creeps in when he thinks of Melisandre’s absence. He must simply get used to her not being there, after all of their tangled history. It is fear of the unfamiliar, of loneliness, of what lies ahead. It is not about her, it is about him.

But these claims don’t help lighten the dark circles under his eyes or even out his stuttered breathing that comes when someone mentions her part in the battle. They don’t prevent him from fitful snatches of sleep that are filled with unrealistically vibrant dreams where she is still alive and infuriating and comforting in only the way that someone who knows your suffering can be, and they don’t quell the disappointment that sometimes lodges itself inside his ribcage when he wakes up to a world she is no longer in.

The waking world is one where everyone will soon forget her, as there is always a new war to be fought, a new system of alliances to keep track of, a new winter to prepare for. There is no time to dwell on the death of one woman whom most of the other barely know.

He was never one to lose himself in grief. But this is not grief. This is a twisted, complicated thing without a name.

He cannot stop himself from thinking that perhaps she deserves better. After all, he still believes Stannis did, and he was the one who gave the order to kill Shireen. Once upon a time, he and Melisandre had reflected on his own honesty. Davos had been able to forgive himself for his misdeeds, then. Maybe if he were a better man, he could forgive her, too.

But he is not a better man. She may deserve the barest offering of grief, but she will never deserve forgiveness. She may deserve a place in his memory, but Davos isn’t sure she would deserve another chance at life, should someone ever succeed in what she had managed and bring her back from the dead.

Perhaps it is because he is not a better man that there is that uncertainty. He is sure Jon would have no doubts about what the Red Woman had a right to in this imaginary situation. Jon would come to recognize her evil and get rid of her himself. Jon would sleep soundly, knowing the world is better off without her to wreak havoc on it. Jon wouldn’t hesitate to say that such a person does not deserve the privilege of living.

But that is why Jon was named King In the North and not Davos. To be a ruler requires the wisdom and distance to decide such things, and it is becoming more and more obvious that Davos does not have either.

Because surely these cannot be the thoughts of a sane man. Surely he cannot entertain the thought that he _misses_ her. Not when the thought of her name in his mouth disgusts him. Not when the hatred seething in his heart bubbles up and threatens to drown him whenever the men in the surrounding tents talk about their own daughters, who are still alive and well.

But.

* * *

In another life, a less weary version of him might pray for guidance, to make sense of what this ridiculous mess of emotions means, to identify what the fuck is happening to his mind and how fucking _fix it_.

They are almost back to King’s Landing, and one of the men, some minor lord whose name Davos cannot bring himself to bother to remember, starts a fire. It is still, perhaps, a bit too warm this far south for one, but after the unrelenting northron cold that has seeped into everyone’s very bones, the overbearing warmth is welcome.

Directly in front of him, a patch of yellow-red dances in the wind and he thinks he sees Melisandre’s face.

He blinks a few times and the vision is gone. Davos has stopped breathing and, once again, wonders if his mind truly is no longer his own. Upon seeing his fearful expression, Jon looks briefly concerned, during one of the few moments he is not solely focused on the Targaryen girl or his own family.

Davos waves his hand, says he is tired, ambles to his tent.

He does not sleep.

Instead, he looks at the ground, at a leaf that has blown in, a leaf colored a deep and terrible red.

Until sunrise, the only word in his head is “Melisandre.”

* * *

He keeps the leaf, curls it around the finger bones in the pouch circling his neck. He wishes he could explain why.

It is not long before the Targaryen girl well and truly embraces the madness that flows through her family’s veins, burning the city and the people’s faith in her to the ground. Jon has done what he has needed to do. Gone into exile for it. A new age is set to dawn over Westeros, with Davos taking part, rebuilding the fleets and (hopefully) preventing anyone else from following Grey Worm’s example in executing prisoners.

This new purpose successfully occupies him. He sleeps more often, mostly a result of the efforts he must make during the day. But with sleep comes dreaming, and he dreams of _her_ more than ever.

Sometimes, he is killing her, in the same way Jon had slain Daenerys. When he wakes from those dreams, he feels even more tired than on the nights when he doesn’t sleep at all.

His thoughts often drift toward Jon, at what it must have taken for him to do what he did. He is not sure whether he admires him for it or not. Though he does miss the boy and the insight and kindheartedness he brought with him.

Davos does not think he would have been capable of such an act. If he had been in Jon’s place, facing an all-powerful Melisandre bent on reinventing the world in her vision, he would not have been able to drive the knife into her heart. And that is for a woman he despises, who seemed to exist solely to oppose him. For as little sense as it made, Jon had loved the woman he killed, even if he grew to hate what she wanted.

Hate and love. Coexisting, just as good and evil do.

Yet, Jon seemed on his way to making peace with what he had done. Had justified it to himself. Had mourned, yes, but would make the same choice again and again. Even if it meant losing everything.

It is a good thing Davos is merely a Small Council member and not king. He knows now that he would not have been willing to risk everything. He can and will make selfish choices, as many men do. Whatever might happen, he could never risk the possibility of mourning forever.

Because that _is_ what he’s doing, isn’t it? This is what mourning is. Fixating on someone’s death. Letting that death hurt you over and over again. Seeing pieces of them everywhere, in the cadence of someone’s voice, in the pattern of some court lady’s dress, in the smirk of a self-righteous arse who thinks he knows better. In the anger he feels when someone suggests a dangerous solution. In the revolting sadness that accompanies any mention of death by burning. In the hatred of which everyone else speaks of past kings and queens, but simply serves to remind him of his own, not toward any ruler, but for a simple fire priestess. All of these pieces he gathers and clutches onto day after day, loathing their presence, but unable to let them go. Forever living in opposites.

It is a curious thing to mourn that which you hate.

It is an even more curious thing to love it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I finally wrote something and I am, in fact, still out here!! Happy New Year, we're creating stuff up in this bitch.


End file.
